No Release
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: Inspired by the events of Mockingjay. 'He had to stay strong for both of them now...' The Capitol have Caesar and Effie. And what better way to torture them than to physically break one of them in a way that will emotionally destroy the other?


**Little Hunger Games fic I wrote because I was bored. Based on but not accurate to the events of Mockingjay. I'm a sadist, I am aware. **

* * *

The first time they hung him up from the ceiling by his handcuffs, he thought about her. And when they kicked him in the stomach until it brought up blood, he barely noticed until there was copper running out of his lips. All he could think about was that he couldn't make it obvious that he was bothered about pain or death or dying or any of that. He couldn't make it seem like they were breaking him.

Caesar stared at her with blood flowing freely from his swollen lips. Effie was down on her knees, handcuffed to two Peacekeepers, screaming and begging them to make the other two battering him - emotionless, bloodied creatures dressed all in white - stop hurting him. He tried to force a smile; tried to prove to her that he was okay.

He'd been unchained from the ceiling. His arms were most likely dislocated, and he made a mental note to confirm this when the peacekeepers got tired of beating him. Then he realized that this would probably never happen. His body was weak and covered in dried blood from the past week of merciless beatings; each and every time, a mostly unscathed Effie had been chained between the same two guards, screaming and crying. She was why he was trying to stay strong. He couldn't let on that they were getting to him. He had to be strong for both of them in this time of hardship that they and their cushy little seats in The Capitol's lap of luxury had never known.

Every day, when they had smashed their fists into his face or kicked him in the stomach until he threw up or whipped him until he bled, he had told himself that he couldn't let himself surrender. He knew pain, because he had felt it before. Maybe not like this, but all pain is the same when you really get down to the core of it. A physical sensation. Temporary. Pain couldn't harm him; pain couldn't even touch him. And when - and this was a certainty, not a question - the District 13 rebels came for them, he would cling on, and he would recover. Eventually. He may not be the same person afterwards, but he would be alive, and Effie would still be alive, and they would pull through together.

But he was getting tired. He hadn't slept a minute in more than a week, but even so this wasn't that sort of tired. This was his body beginning to shut itself down. And for one fatal moment, he forgot all his hopes. He forgot everything he had been clinging to - everything he had been trying to ignore - for the past week.

"Owwww," he moaned at last, so absorbed in his own thoughts and suffering, he'd been entirely ignoring what was going on.

He tasted something like cloth in his mouth. It was a glove. There was a glove and a hand, and a pair of pliers in his mouth, and he saw his first canine laying on the floor, embedded in bloody pulp.

He looked up again. Effie was struggling against her bonds with what looked like could be enough force to break her wrists, screaming bloody murder, tears streaming down her cheeks and her mouth stretched open in a never-ending cry, as if it were her who had been in intolerable pain for more than 100 hours. This was hurting her too. This was why he couldn't die.

"_Stop it! What are you doing? You're hurting him, stop!_"

They were crushing the second canine, grinding the pliers into his gums, and this time, he couldn't help but cry out because it hurt, it goddamn hurt and he knew it.

The admittance of one pain ledto the acceptance of them all, and before he could take a breath to block it out of his mind, his shoulders wereaching , and his mind was cloudy from the days without sleep. His back was burning from where they'd beaten and lashed him, and his mouth tasted of nothing but cloth and metal, and they were pulling out the next one...

"What do you want?" he screamed, in a moment of temporary weakness. He'd refused to talk from the time they'd arrived, and his own voice scared him.

What frightened him even more, loathe as he was to admit it, is that the guards laughed at him. They were laughing.

"Caesar," one began. He was large and brutish, probably the leader of the little pack who loved to devise new ways to make him squirm. "We don't want any information from you. We want to punish you."

He stared at him, confused. This must have been another psychological trick, to make him lose hope.

"For what?" he spat back, his own blood spurting from his mouth.

"This here," he gestured behind him to a still-sobbing, shaking Effie. "Knew about the plans that Everdeen, her little _pet_, had to overthrow the Capitol. Right now, almost all the Districts are in pieces, and they're making their way here right now. This works two ways for us; we can punish her - and you for having anything to do with her - then mash up that pretty little face a bit; hand her back to 13 and let her serve as a warning. And when you die - and note that I said _when_, not _if _- we can dump you in the street when they come and make it look like the rebels murdered Panem's most-loved TV celebrity. That'll look nice on the news; it'll give the Capitol even more cause to hate them."

"You are an absolute sadist," Caesar eeked out through swollen lips. His heart was pounding in his chest; he wasn't worried about himself, but Effie. What did they plan to do to her? This? He knew that she would never be able to cope with losing her looks. Or other things? Other things involving...beds? _Both_?

The guard, frustrated, kicked him square in the face with his steel toed boot. He tasted more copper, before he blacked out...

"Caesar?" It was Effie's tear-thickened voice and hands on his bare shoulders that brought him around. His vision was blurred from fatigue and loss of blood, but he could clearly see that her shoulder-length hair was considerably shorter and the left side of her face was swollen, bruised and bleeding from the lash of a whip. He took a shaky breath, but the pain in his battered ribs prevented him from inhaling fully. Was he...was he dying?

"Eff...Effie..." he slowly raised his hand to her face, brushing it gently with his fingertips. "W...what did they do to you?"

"Nothing compared to you..Caesar..." she stuttered, her eyes barely open and silently streaming with tears as she stared into the face of her lover. Her hand was resting against his battered chest, and she could tell the end was near for him. He had been knocked out for a more than a day - in that time, they had cut her hair, thrown a few punches and whip lashes in her direction and done...unspeakable things to her pride - but this was nothing compared to his ordeal. "Caesar, please, I can't let you go..." she whispered, moving closer to him and stroking the hair out of his eyes.

"I can't fight it, Eff..I've tried, I'm not that strong..." he muttered almost inaudibly, tears running down his cheeks and leaving streaks in the blood.  
"You shouldn't have to...I'm so sorry..."  
"Whatever for?" he looked into her eyes, taking in the hurt that she was trying so much to control.  
"I'm sorry that it's you; that you're in so much pain; that I can't do anything and yet I have to be selfish and beg you to stay, to stay with me..." she admitted quietly, a sob making her voice break halfway through the sentence.  
"Don't you dare, Effie..." he saw the sobs begin, and tried to stop her, until his position became real to him. He wasn't going to see daylight or feel the sunrise or find comfort in Effie's embrace ever again. He was going to die, right here, in the city he had known and loved so well. "I'm sorry...I promise I'll always be with you," he jerkily placed a blood-soaked hand to her heart. "Maybe not here...maybe not now...But I'll always be with you...in here..." She leaned into him, sobbing uncontrollably. He continued. "I won't make it through this...I know it, and you do too, but you're just being a stubborn you-know-what and refusing to believe it..." he attempted to laugh, but it turned into a fit of uncontrollable coughing.

Effie smiled as she locked eyes with this man who had stolen her heart. This man who meant everything and more to her; a man who couldn't be any more opposite to the kind of man she thought she would end up with. "I'll miss you, Caesar..."

He was nearing the end. She could see that. But she couldn't say anything more. In his weakest and last moments, she had to be strong for both of them. Caesar had stayed unflinching for so long to try and protect her; now it was her turn.

"I'll miss you too, Effie...Look, take care of yourself...You need to talk to someone about this as soon as you're safe, you need to forget about all this and remember how things used to be...Promise me..."  
"I promise, Caesar," Courage be damned, she let herself subside into a fit of sobbing. "I don't want you to go..."  
"I don't wanna go either...but it's time...I'm sorry. I love you, Effie..." he whispered, growing more and more tired by the second.  
"I love you too, Caesar..." he smiled one last time, and she stared at the face that she so loved, bruised, beaten and unshaven as it was, as Caesar's eyes became glassy and he breathed out, slowly. She waited for him to draw another shaking breath; she clung to the hope that this was some horrific nightmare, and that she would wake up in her Capitolian penthouse with Caesar shaking her gently awake and telling her that everything was okay; that the Quarter Quell, and the uprising, and the torture had all been a bad dream and that he was here for her and he was never going to leave.

But as much as she hoped and prayed to an unknown deity that Caesar would jump up and yell 'Just kidding!' and everything could be normal again, she knew the harsh reality. Caesar was dead. And he would never come back to her.

She lay across his limp body, sobbing. She was broken, numb and she knew he had taken a big part of her with him; a part she could never hope to get back. She sobbed, hugging him and kissing him over and over; begging him to wake up though she knew he would never rise again. "I love you, Caesar..."

_~Fin~_


End file.
